Illinois Waterway: Take 2

We’re back on the Illinois River after a two-month pause. On Labor Day we drove from St. Paul to Peoria, IL, stopping for lunch in Mason City, IA, and in nearby West Branch, IA, to visit the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site. Our 31st president and the first one born west of the Mississippi River, “Bertie” was orphaned at age nine and sent to live with relatives in Oregon. He never forgot his Iowa Quaker roots, and brought the values of honesty, devotion, responsibility and industriousness to his work as a mining engineer and later into politics. Elected in 1928, President Hoover’s popularity evaporated during the early years of the Great Depression, when it was believed that he wasn’t doing enough to relieve the suffering of average Americans, and he was defeated by FDR in 1932. Hoover’s service work after the White House, including as Chairman of the Boys Clubs of America and co-founder of UNICEF, redeemed his place in history, reminding me of the late Jimmy Carter. Map link: West Branch, IA

Herbert Hoover’s 1874 birthplace. His father’s
blacksmith shop is the brown building on the right.

We picked up a rental car at the Peoria Airport, then arrived at dusk at the Peoria Boat Club, where we quickly unloaded our gear and got settled aboard Dragonfly for a night on the trailer. The weather was lovely, with temps in the 60s and comfortable humidity—such a big change from when we were last here at the end of June. Map link: Peoria, IL

First thing on Tuesday we launched Dragonfly at the public ramp next to the boat club and motored through the shallow, muddy water about 200 yards to our slip. All went well except for a series of an intermittent high temperature alarms on the outboard, and I was worried that the cooling passages were fouled with river muck. 

The boat club had some excitement last Thursday night, when a visiting Looper boat caught fire from a faulty shore-power cable. The fire was extinguished and the boat appears to be salvageable, but the owners’ journey is on hold while they settle with their insurance company. Sadly, they were to cross their wake and complete their Loop in Grafton, just 165 miles away.

Fire damage on the transom (I blacked out the
vessel’s name and homeport).

We drove southwest to Grafton, IL, to drop off our truck and trailer. We’re trying something different this time—having our rig at the endpoint ready to go when we arrive, rather than leaving it at the start and then going back to retrieve it. After our drop-off, we ate lunch at Grafton Pub, then drove the rental car to Springfield, IL, to visit the Illinois State Capitol and the Abraham Lincoln Home National Historic Site. Abe and Mary Lincoln’s house from 1844-1861 was restored and surrounded by an entire block of period structures that depict life in that era. Guided tours are available, but we arrived too late in the day. Map link: Springfield, IL

Bonus Question: (I love presidential trivia!) Who is the only U.S. President to earn a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degree? (answer at end of post).

We returned to Peoria, grabbed dinner at Jimmy John’s, dropped off the rental car, Ubered back to the boat club, ate our sandwiches, met the marina manager to settle our bill and crashed after a whirlwind day.

Bonus Question Answer: George W. Bush, our 43rd president, graduated from Harvard Business School in 1975 and is the only president with an MBA. Fun Facts: Bush was a solid C-student as a Yale undergraduate, finishing with a 2.35 GPA (out of 4.00). He applied to the University of Texas Law School but was rejected.